It's You
by AnotherGirlWithAStory
Summary: "I thought for sure that you would have seen her by now." Nathan said with a shrug and returned to the TV. Lucas did the same. "I mean you two are like the opposing sides of two magnets. It's completely impossible for you to stay away from each other." Lucas rolled his eyes but didn't argue. There was no need for him to argue with something he knew to be true.


**Title** : It's You

 **Pairing** : Brooke x Lucas

 **Characters** : Lucas Scott, Brooke Davis, Nathan Scott, Haley James Scott & Karen Roe.

 **Word Count** : 3, 040

* * *

Lucas Scott was a lot of things. He was ambitious, he was courageous, he was strong and caring. He had a lot of traits that more than once managed to get him out of hard situations and to the point in his life where he had managed to fulfill a lot of his goals. But he wasn't an all-around good person. Lucas – just like everyone else – was flawed and with every strength came a weakness. He was indecisive. He was careless with his heart. As a teenager, he had been careless with other people's hearts. He was afraid of rejection, he was afraid of not being loved and he was afraid of being loved too much. He was a paradox. He wanted what he feared and when he had it he lashed out and made sure that he lost it before someone else took it away from him.

That's what he did when he realized as a teenager that he was getting too close to Brooke Davis. He did whatever he could to push her away and in the end, he succeeded. The beautiful, talented, amazing brunette that had enchanted his life walked out of it and left him behind. Lucas never thought he'd see her return to Tree Hill. He was sure of the fact that the city where they had both grown up was too small for the greatness that was Brooke Davis. He should have known better. Lucas should have known that Brooke Davis never did what anyone expected of her. _Not even him_.

The first time he heard about it was when he was watching a game with Nathan. His younger brother had for the first time since being forced to use that wheelchair not turned his offer down. So, there they sat – Lucas in the couch and Nathan in his chair – drinking beers and occasionally screaming a profanity to the judges when they did something stupid.

"So," Nathan said in his casual manner. "Have you seen Brooke since she came back?"

Lucas frowned. "Brooke's back in Tree Hill?"

Nathan raised an eyebrow. For a moment, he looked like he did when they were younger, cocky and more sure of himself than any other teenager Lucas knew.

"I thought for sure that you would have seen her by now." Nathan said with a shrug and returned to the TV. Lucas did the same. "I mean you two are like the opposing sides of two magnets. It's completely impossible for you to stay away from each other."

Lucas rolled his eyes but didn't argue. There was no need for him to argue with something he knew to be true.

Brooke had a way of making him feel every emotion available to the human psyche. And even if fear was one of them Lucas couldn't help but feel drawn to her. He enjoyed most of the feelings he experienced with her. Seeing Brooke Davis was like waking up after a long winter and realizing just how much you missed the spring with all its life, its brightness and sheer beauty.

"What are you going to do when you see her?"

"I'll do what I always do. I'll smile at her. I'll say something along the lines of hey, Cheery and then she'll call me Broody and we'll hug." Nathan sighs made Lucas laugh. "What do you want me to do man?"

"I want you to stop acting like a coward and tell her that you miss her." Nathan put the beer on the table and turned his attention to Lucas. "Haley and I have seen the two of you dance around each other since we were sixteen years old. You love her and she loves you but no one ever does anything. It's driving me mental."

"I'll pay for therapy." Lucas answered with a small smile that vanished after just a few seconds. "But I can't tell her that."

"Why the hell not?"

Lucas shrugged. There were so many reasons. He had broken her heart more than once. He had realized after multiple failed relationships that he wasn't meant to be fixed. That inherent fear didn't go away as he grew older but rather the other way around. It grew stronger and he found more reasons to stay single than he did to be in a relationship.

"Dude, I realize that being in a relationship is a big deal for you what with everything that happened between Karen and our dad and then Karen and Keith." Nathan saw the way Keith's name made his brother flinch but didn't say anything. "But you can't be afraid of love for the rest of your life just because you've seen relationships end badly. It's not all bad feeling that strongly for someone. Sometimes I'd go so far as to say that it's fucking amazing."

Lucas nodded. He'd been at the sideline of Nathan and Haley's relationship. He had seen their relationship grow from something passionate and sweet built upon a naïve love for each other to something stronger and solid built upon feelings of trust, care and a deep-rooted want for each other. Both Haley and Nathan knew that they didn't _need_ each other per say but they wanted each other and that was better than anything else in the world. Lucas knew that feeling. He didn't need Brooke. She didn't need him. But he knew that he wanted her. And that always had his heart freeze inside his chest.

"I don't know Nathan." Lucas frowned. "We've been through this so many times before. When we were younger all I had to do was fight for her but I don't think that's all it's going to take anymore. I'm not saying that's the reason that I won't tell her. It's part of it. But the biggest reason is that I can't put her through that again. If I'm going to tell her how I feel, how I've always felt then I need to know for sure that I won't fuck it up again."

Nathan nodded. "Yeah, I get that. I wish you would know that right now but I get it."

"Yeah sorry," Lucas laughed.

"That's okay man, you said something about paying for my therapy?"

From that moment, it was only a question of when he saw Brooke not if. Lucas was a writer. He imagined where it would be, he imagined what they would say to each other and how she would look at him and he would look at her. He had been wrong about everything. Because Brooke Davis never did was people expected of her. Not even him. Lucas walked into Karen's Café one morning with his laptop under his arm. When even his nephew was telling him that he needed to write Lucas realized that everyone had been right. His hair was messy and he walked in as he had so many times before to see his mother standing by the counter deep in discussion with a brunette. His mother looked up and waved. The brunette turned around and Lucas felt his smile grow.

Brooke's hair was shorter than it had been the last time he saw her. She wore a pair of loosely fitting jeans, a tight top and a knitted oversized cardigan. The same bright light seemed to glitter inside her eyes and her smile held the same kind of happiness, carelessness and comfort. It was as if the hardships of Brooke's life had somehow left her only stronger, wiser and completely otherwise unharmed. Lucas knew that wasn't true. But he could understand why other people thought that to be the case.

"Hey Cheery." Lucas put the computer on the desk next to her.

Brooke stood up. "Hey Broody." She didn't hesitate to put her arms around his waist and pull him closer to her.

Lucas could feel his heart beat quicker on the inside of his chest. As always, he wondered if she could feel it. He always imagined that she could due to purely on the look she would give him once he backed away. It was a knowing smile. The kind she gave him when they were younger. It was a smile that scared him shitless at the same time as it made him fall even more in love with her.

"How've you been?" Lucas asked and sat down on the stool next to her. "What are you doing here?"

"I've been good. I've been working, working nonstop." She laughed and waved her hands as if brushing away a problem. The easy-going tone in her voice was a good façade. Had it not been for the fact that Lucas knew her. _Oh, he knew her so well_. "And I'm here because I missed home. It's not until you've been away from a place and the people in a really long time that you truly realize how beautiful it is, you know?"

Lucas nodded and gave her a thoughtful smile. "Yeah."

Brooke tilted her head slightly to the right as she sneaked her hand onto his. "I've missed you a lot Broody."

Lucas smile grew. "I've missed you too Cheery. So much."

He asked her how long she was staying. She told him that she was staying for good. He asked her about how it was working with Victoria and she answered. For every question, she answered Lucas came up with another one and then another one. He was desperate not to let her go. He just wanted, no he needed her to stay with him just a little while longer so that he could tell his heart to get used to this. He needed for his heart to understand that he couldn't tell Brooke how he felt about her. He had already broken her too many times before. He couldn't, wouldn't, do it again. When she left the café, Lucas knew that he wouldn't be able to see her again in a while.

So, he avoided her. He was acting like a silly teenager stuck in the body of an adult man. But that didn't stop him from continuing doing so.

"You are being a moron Lucas Scott." Haley told him during the few times she walked into his house. "You love each other. She's just waiting for you to tell her."

"Come on man, this cannot be good for you." Nathan told him one of the few times he went with her. "And coming from me, the master of doing things that aren't good for you, that should mean something. You two need each other."

Lucas rolled his eyes. "No, we don't. We don't need each other." _I want her. But I don't deserve her_.

Even Karen told him that he was acting like a child. "Lucas, you can't be afraid forever." She told him with that ever so patient look on her face. "I can see why you would be afraid when all you've ever seen come from love is hurt and pain. But you cannot let that affect the way you look at love your entire life."

Lucas listened to what they said. But none of them told him what he needed to hear. Sadly, there were very few people in this world who knew him well enough to tell him what he needed. _Only one of them was alive and he was avoiding her like the plague._

That's what brought him to the river court late one night when the moon was shining down on it and the stars twinkled away as if nothing was wrong with the world. He did what he used to as a child and teenager. He ran – granted not as quickly as he used to – and then toyed around with the basketball as he allowed his thoughts to run freely. Most of the time his brain ended up focusing on Brooke even if he didn't want to. Even when he was avoiding her she was ever so present in his life. After a few hours, a car appeared. Lucas didn't have to look at it to know who it was. It was Brooke _. As always_.

"Hey Lucas Scott." She said and walked to the middle of the court where he stood with the ball under his arm. "I thought we were too old for this avoiding game. It was cool when we were teenagers but it's a tiny bit immature now, don't you think?"

She said it with her usual level of humor. That somehow had him feeling less horrible about being an immature boy. She was beautiful. She always was. And as always Lucas felt the zoo wake up inside his gut and it had him feeling like he could never get enough of her. Not even if he could spend his entire life with her.

"Yeah, you're right." He agreed and walked around her as he dribbled the ball.

"So, are you going to tell me what's going through that pretty head of yours?" Brooke asked and turned around to watch him. He threw the ball but missed the target by just a few millimeters. When he turned around he had that broody expression on his face. Brooke laughed, some things never changed. "I can see the wheels inside your head moving Luke, what is it that you're not telling me huh?"

Lucas leaned his hands against his neck. "There's so much I'm not telling you. There's always been so much that I've kept from you. Especially from when we were teenagers." He admitted with a pained sound to his voice. "I've been avoiding you for the past week because I haven't been trusting myself not to blurt out all the things that I've been wanting to tell you for years. And the reason that I haven't been telling you is because I don't think it's fair on you, it's not the right time. I've hurt you so many times before and I am not going to do it again."

Brooke's face was unreadable. Even to him. And then she spoke with a calm, and a force that he recognized as so typical Brooke Davis. "You don't have a say in who hurts me Lucas Scott. I am the only one that gets to decide that. And if anyone is going to hurt me or break my heart then I would rather it be you than anyone else. Because in some strange way after you break my heart you always have a way of fixing it somehow. As for waiting for the right time, Broody there will never be a good time for anything in this world. So, you might as well tell me what's going through your mind now when you have the chance to."

Lucas smiled. Memories of him and Brooke, memories of Nathan and Haley telling him that he was being an idiot were going through his head and by the end of it all he was ready to throw fear to hell.

"Peyton once asked me who I wanted by my side when all my dreams come true and I told her it was you. Rachel dared me to make a shoot on this court to prove to her that faith, or destiny or whatever power there was had decided that we were meant to be together. You had me tell you that I was the guy for you." Lucas laughed. "All through our relationship there has been people rooting for us, or not rooting for us. But I've always been sure that we were meant to be. I've always rooted for us. I could never imagine that something could come between us and I never thought that I would be the thing that broke us up. If I could go back and change one moment then I would change the moment when I ruined us. Because I've realized that it's always been you Brooke Davis. I have been afraid of loving you my entire life. I have denied it and I have ruined it but I can't deny it anymore and I can't ignore it with you being so close to me. I can't see you every day and not have you knowing that…"

"Knowing what?" Brooke's voice was croaked, wavering but not weak.

Lucas smiled. "That it's you."

Brooke and Lucas was nothing like each other. Lucas was thoughtful and never did anything without thinking it through both four and five times. As a teenager, he had been careless with his heart and others. As an adult, he was no longer careless with other people's hearts. He liked to think that he had grown up. Brooke had grown up too. But she was still impulsive. She still followed her emotions when she needed to. And in that moment with the blood rushing through her body, the beat of her heart echoing in her ears and the feeling of tears filling her tears as she heard exactly what she had always wanted to hear Brooke knew exactly what she needed. And when Brooke Davis needed something she went out and got it.

It took four steps before she was in his arms. Brooke felt that she fit against his chest as if not a day had gone by since they last stood that close. His lips molded themselves after her and he touched her the way he used to. _Again, as if they had never broken up_. Brooke was not one to push. Not when it came to her own needs. That's why she never pushed him to be with her or to tell her what he really felt even if it was blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes. To the shock of the people she went to school with Brooke Davis was not selfish like that.

She too had wanted him back. She loved being loved by him because Lucas Scott didn't only love her for what she looked like. He loved her for the person that she was and for the things she was capable of doing. Lucas Scott had always believed in her and she in him. He was the guy for whom she would have given up everything. He was the one her heart was longing for. It was never about the place. It was always him. It was Lucas Scott.

 **The end**


End file.
